How To Securely Erase Your Hard Drive

by Abu Saeed

04 Dec 2012

Securely erasing your hard drive of your personal information has never been more important. If you own a computer, mobile phone, digital camera, PS3 or Xbox you will want to read this article. As we accumulate digital devices, our personal information, website URLs, images and locations of those images, documents and many other bits of data get stored and forgotten on these devices. Now these bits of data sound harmless, but what if someone found an old SD card you had thrown out?

If the SD card contains EXIF & Geotagging data it can be scarier than you think. In the hands of the wrong person, the data from these images and documents could be used to look up your location on Google Earth. You could even be targeted for identity theft if you’ve saved documents on it that contained banking information or passwords.

The responsible thing to do is keep track of devices and their storage devices. If you want to discard, giveaway, sell or lend a device, be thorough and secure-erase its storage device.

You can erase 18 storage devices simultaneously and with the included hex viewer all areas of the drives can be inspected for data. You can choose from a number of built-in algorithms which incorporate DOD (Department of Defense ) standards or use your own custom pattern.

10 years ago you may not have considered the need for a hard drive utility like this but times have changed and the bad guys are much smarter now.

MediaTools Wipe works with any IDE, SATA, USB, eSATA, or Firewire connected disk or flash drive that is accessible by the operating system. External, hot-swappable multi-drive enclosures work seamlessly. Completed drives can be removed and new drives added without interrupting ongoing wipe operations, allowing for continuous operation.